A BREATH OF FRESH AIR OR AN ACRID ODOUR?

The latest instalment of the “breath of fresh air” from Goodluck Jonathan in fulfilment of his campaign promises will be unveiled to Nigerians in the new year in the form of the removal of subsidy on petroleum products.  That is for those who still believe there is any subsidy on the products.  These days the only topic of discussion among Nigerians wherever you find them is the government’s plan to hike the price of petroleum products and further pauperise Nigerians no matter the level of cacophony generated by the ordinary citizens who will ultimately bear the brunt of this latest callousness by a government that promised them a “breath of fresh air”.  Though to be fair to Goodluck, he did not mention how fresh the air will be.  To me, this can only be written down as the wages of electing a clueless leader.

The planned hike in the prices of petroleum products is an old song inherited from Obasanjo who did so about six times in a spate of eight years.  The first time we heard of “oil subsidy” was during Babangida’s government in 1988.  When the regime wanted to increase the price of petroleum products, Jerry Gana assaulted our ears with the benefits of doing so.  A certain Labaran Maku, then President of the Students Union Government of the University of Jos, was on record as calling the act “criminality and inhumanity” that should be fought by every Nigerian.  Two decades on, the same Maku is playing the role that Jerry Gana did for Babangida.  It was also a song remixed by Okonjo-Iweala, the World Bank employee with a double barrelled portfolio of Co-ordinating Economic Minister and Minster of Finance, a first for any country, civilised or otherwise.  This woman left her office as Managing Director of the World Bank (a middle cadre office which the Nigerian media made it sound as if she is the Chief Executive officer of the Bank) to assume office as a minister in Nigeria just as the French Finance minister, Christine Legarde, was fighting tooth and nail to be appointed the Managing Director of the IMF, the junior twin of the Bretton Woods Instittutions.  During her first incarnation as Finance minister under the Obasanjo government, Okonjo-Iweala, caused Nigeria to part with $18billion as repayment to Paris Club of creditors, though it was universally agreed that the loans are dubious.  That was how she was rewarded with a promotion as one of three Managing Directors of the World Bank  after she was frustrated out of office by the same Obasanjo.

Though this blackmail of the poor by successive governments have been on since 1998,  General Abacha’s “removal” in 1995 that gave birth to the PTF was supposed to be last one.  Obasanjo thereafter “removed” the subsidy about six times.  Increment in the prices of petroleum  products has always been the easiest means of robbing the poor to pay for the profligacy of the ruling class.  The government have been bandying around figures that makes no sense to anyone apart from its apologists.  The Nigerian ruling class, be it military or civilian, is the same when it comes to the welfare of its ‘subjects’.  For all they care we can all collectively go and jump in the Lagos lagoon so long as we can pay for their lifestyles.  Already Nigerians are living under the most dehumanising and degrading conditions imaginable among all the citizens of oil producing countries the world over, but this is no concern to our ‘rulers’.

Petrol prices have the most impact on our lives compared to any other commodity though I believe those that live fat on our blood may not even be aware of this from the Olympian heights they live.  Though they bamboozle us with the macro aspect of petrol prices, I would like to crave their indulgence by begging them to look down for once and see the road their folly may take us to.  Take for instance the achaba operator who may have to buy a litre of petrol at N150.  His passenger may have to pay him N200 for a drop because he will have to also visit the roadside mama put to eat, who in turn have to go to the market to buy the foodstuff for her roadside canteen business from the man who sale grains in the market, who in turn has to go to the village market to buy the grains, which must be transported to his shop in the market by a commercial vehicle driver, who in turn has to go to the fuel station to buy petrol.  Now I know this my sound too complicated to our macro economists like Okonjo-Iweala, so let me put it this way.  Bottomline is – they are all dependent on one petrol powered machine or the other, even the farmer has to hire a tractor which uses diesel to till his farm to be able to sow and reap before taking his harvest to the village market.  Now, if I am not asking too much, I will like their excellences to put in perspective how this vicious circle may end up financially and practically strangulating the end user – the poor, unemployed wretches scattered all over the streets of this blighted nation.  The only logical outcome I can see from this gloomy scenario is the inability of Nigerians to take care of their most basic bills.

A cabal of the president’s friends under what they called “organised private sector” have been making noise how the poor won’t feel the pinch when they hike the price of petrol because most of them uses buses and not cars and buses use diesel not petrol.  This is not only patronising but insulting.  So the poor don’t cars – is it their fault?  Anyway, the poor doesn’t even have the luxury of using buses these days – they use achaba – those two-wheeled devils that decimate their population on a daily basis.  Our casualty wards in our hospitals tells their own story, though such places are not places where Goodluck and his friends visit.

Already we have seen how the children of majority of Nigerians are loitering our streets because their parents cannot afford to send them to school; how people are turning to alternative medicine because it is cheaper, accessible and affordable to the poor; how businesses are closing down because of lack of patronage from a populace already overburdened by poverty and deprivation.  If the government is to be believed that it expended the sum of N900billion on oil subsidy, why on earth couldn’t they have used the money to reactivate our comatose refineries or even build new ones?  How much will it cost to build new refineries?  And by the way, what happens to the 445,000 barrels per day allocated to NNPC for local refining?

It will be good, though I know it should be asking far too much, if the government will tell us why we have to import, who imports, what is the cost of the importation, who benefits from the subsidy and how is this subsidy calculated and based on what indices.  In Ghaddafi’s Libya, electricity, water, education and healthcare are all free.  No Libyan lives in a rented property and a litre of petrol cost about N22.  Yet the Libyans lynched him.  But our government is lynching us economically in a painful, slow death.  A man whose campaign platform consists of only telling Nigerians that he was not born rish as if all others were born rish promised us a “breath of fresh air”.  That he went to school without shoes.  Don’t we all?  Well, we now live in an atmosphere polluted with acrid smell, less than one year into his four.  We ask for it.

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INSECURITY IN THE NORTH EAST - IMPUNITY OF POWER?

INSECURITY IN THE NORTH EAST – IMPUNITY OF POWER?

Much has been said and written on the security situation in the north eastern part of the country, particularly this year with the increase in the frequency of attacks by God knows who.  A situation that has been presented as defying all efforts to bring to end the wanton destruction of lives and property; a situation that began as a local fire fight that has taken a national dimension and is now used by those in the business of conjuring conspiracy theories where non exist, as a direct challenge to Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency by a section of the country.  Sadly, most of our politicians know where the problems lie and the solution staring them right in the face.  They are either unwilling to take any action to stop the carnage or are comfortable with the state of affairs.  In my opinion the later is the case and I will shortly give reasons for my conclusions.

One thing I disagree with is the attribution of every atrocity and criminal act to the Boko Haram sect, willy nilly, wherever it took place in the country.  Well before the extra-judicial murders of Mohammed Yusuf and Buji Foi, leaders of the Boko Haram sect, the north east zone has been experiencing murderous sprees from killer squads like the Kalare and the ECOMOG  created and nurtured by former governors Danjuma Goje and Ali Madu Sheriff of Gombe and Borno states respectively.  The activities of these killers were well known to the authorities but nobody deem it fit to check their activities, therefore not a single murderer was brought to book.  In the cracked days of Obasanjo, one couldn’t be sure that the gang of killers wasn’t part of a larger scheme to perpetuate the planned PDP rulership of the country ad infinitum.  What with the existence of murderous gangs all over the country running roughshod over innocent citizens with the security agencies standing aside as spectators – OPC in the south west, MEND and a motley of brigands in the Niger Delta, MASSOB in the east and the Kalare and ECOMOG group in the north.

In the north east, any voices of dissent to the two ex-governors – Goje and Madu Sheriff – were brutally silenced by the Kalare and ECOMOG groups with finality.  The zone was in this state of dread when the police decided to use its guns as funeral dirge on a funeral procession of Mohammed Yusuf’s followers on their way to bury one of their own in Maiduguri in 2009.  The rest as they say, is history.  Mohammed Yusuf and Buji Foi, a Commissioner in Madu Sherriff’s cabinet, were arrested by the military and handed over to the police, who in turn took the duo to the governor and thereafter killed them without giving them the benefit of stating their case or the country the benefit of hearing what were their gripes.  Much as the people tried to find out who gave the order for this barbarous action, the police and the authorities played dumb until bodies of police officers began littering our ever dirty streets culminating in the bomb attack on the police headquarters in Abuja.  That was when we learnt that some police officers were taken to court for the murder of Yusuf and Foi.  All this is beside the point.

Critically this state of affairs provided a perfect background for public officials with skeletons in their closets.  Coincidentally the frequency of the killings picked up astronomically, purportedly carried out by the Boko Haram to avenge their slained leaders.  We swallowed this line of thinking hook, line and sinker.  Nobody bothered to dig deeper and bring these “Boko Haram” killers to book.  In Borno state, people were killed in broad daylight while no single arrest was made – we only get the standard “Boko Haram are the perpetrators, and we will soon deal with them”.  It appears the killers are ghosts and will never be apprehended.  That is until recently.  Suddenly some arrests were made in Borno state and those arrested started singing like canaries.  Nigerians for the first time learnt of the involvement of others apart from the Boko Haram in the killings.  The success in apprehending the few and the intelligence gathered from their statements were attributed to a certain Major General Mungono, the erstwhile Chief of Defence Intelligence.  Incidentally, the General is from Borno State, the centre of the theatre of war and ‘home state’ of Boko Haram.  But Mungon’s successes made some people jittery – powerful, ruthless people – whose secrets will be laid bare for all to see.  People who value their allegiance to dark forces more than their fealty to the nation.  People who are of the view that they can do as they please and play god with people’s lives.  Suddenly stories started flying around that Mungonu will be dealt with; he will be removed from his position as Chief of Defence Intelligence; and that his career will be truncated for daring to expose these purveyors of death – wolf in sheep skin.

Today we all know that Mungonu is removed from the office of the CDI, what remains to be seen is whether he will be sacked from the army.  This gentleman’s offence is no other than his love for his country and the preservation of human life.  But the government he is working for doesn’t care about sanctity of human life or the reputation of a hardworking officer – or so it seems.  The continued freedom of vermin amongst us is more important to the government than our lives and safety.  Are we therefore to infer that the likes of Madu Sheriff can control the affairs of the killer ECOMOG group and control the Nigerian Army as well?  Because we don’t know what to believe anymore.

General Mungonu’s travails began with the release of a one Ali Tishaku.  This was a man who was released by whichever security that detained him on a court’s order but the story carried in the media was that he was released by Mungonu and nobody bothered to check the details before going to press.  Is this then a classical case of giving a dog a bad name in order that it is hanged?  The man was supposed to be a mole planted on Mohammed Yususf by one of the security agencies and when he turned in from the cold and members of Madu Sheriff’s ECOMOG began to be dragged in based on information provided by him, General Mungonu found himself staring at the barrel end of a gun.  The threats of sacking him began flying around and the first part of theses threats was made good by his removal from the office of CDI.  I thought the man deserves commendation not condemnation.  The government’s action regarding the general more than anything indicates to Nigerians that the insecurity in the land is contrived and may not be over soon.

The Desert Herald of October 4^th, had the issue of Munguno and Madu Sheriff as its cover story.  Two weeks after the story appeared, not a single word is heard from the government, Madu Sheriff or any other person refuting the plethora of allegations contained in the story.  Are we therefore to infer that story is true in all its ramifications and every material sense?